To the nation’s shame, President Trump is setting some sort of macabre record for surviving assassination attempts.
The latest attempt to murder Mr. Trump came at the Washington Hilton during the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner. It’s the same location where President Reagan was wounded in an assassination attempt in 1981.
This time, authorities say, a man armed with a shotgun, a handgun and knives sprinted past a security checkpoint in the hotel lobby, intent on killing Mr. Trump and as many other high administration officials as he could.
Instead, law enforcement officers tackled the suspected gunman, Cole Tomas Allen, 31, of Torrance, California. Shots were fired, a Secret Service agent was hit in his ballistic vest, but the suspect never made it into the ballroom where thousands of dinner guests cowered under tables while bodyguards rushed Mr. Trump and other government officials to safety.
Mr. Allen left behind a manifesto expressing his rage at the president and the administration’s policies. He had checked into the hotel the night before the dinner, after a four-day train trip from California.
The president said the episode is another reason why his proposed $400 million White House ballroom project, which faces legal hurdles, should be completed.
It was the fourth attempt on Mr. Trump’s life in two years. The White House blamed Democrats’ rhetoric for encouraging violence against the president.
On that front, Mr. Trump called for the firing of late-night TV host Jimmy Kimmel, who had commented two days before the assassination attempt that first lady Melania Trump looked like an “expectant widow.” Mr. Kimmel said it was a jab over the age difference between the president, 79, and Mrs. Trump, 56 — not a prediction or a call for another assassination attempt.
But the Federal Communications Commission announced it is reviewing the broadcast licenses of local stations owned by ABC, which airs Mr. Kimmel’s show.
And former FBI Director James B. Comey surrendered to federal authorities after being indicted on charges of making threats against Mr. Trump in a social media post last year.
Mr. Comey, an adversary of Mr. Trump, is charged with one count of knowingly and willfully making a threat to take the life of and to inflict bodily harm upon the president and one count of knowingly and willfully transmitting an interstate commerce communication that contained a threat to kill the president of the United States, according to the court’s filing.
He was indicted in North Carolina related to a photo he posted of seashells arranged in the numbers “86 47,” which the Justice Department argues amounted to a threat against Mr. Trump.
Mr. Comey said he believed it was communicating a “political message” and deleted the post.
“I didn’t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence,” he said in a statement. “It never occurred to me, but I oppose violence of any kind so I took the post down.”
